


Communications

by mydogwatson



Series: PostcardTales III [8]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: A slightly alternative meeting, Late night radio, Lonely John, M/M, Marriage, Old Age
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-19
Updated: 2017-02-19
Packaged: 2018-09-25 16:22:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9829097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mydogwatson/pseuds/mydogwatson
Summary: Late night chat shows can change lives, apparently.





	

**Author's Note:**

> So sorry to have disappeared without warning. But as some of you know my dog was recently diagnosed with pancreatitis and he had a very bad flare-up the other day. So my time has been filled with vet visits, doggy care, and worrying. Today things have been fairly quiet, so I was able to polish this and get it posted. Hopefully, I can get back on schedule, but please forgive me if there is more interruption. I will try.

The nights were the worst.

Truthfully, given the fact that his days were empty and meaningless and lonely, that was saying something. But since the dark hours most often brought only nightmares filled with terror that caused him to wake up sweating and shaking, John stuck with the contention: Nights were the worst.

All of which explained why he found himself turning to the cheap plastic radio left in the room by a previous tenant. The only available television was downstairs in the common area, but it was off-limits after midnight, so the radio it was, by default.

In the beginning, he tuned into music. Pop. Classical. Even a little country, which he basically hated. Jazz was sometimes nice.

But he quickly realised that music did very little to ease the loneliness. What he wanted and needed was to know that there was an actual person out there, keeping him company, even if it were only as a voice on the radio. 

So he started looking for chat programs. He spent one night listening to an Oxford professor explaining the history of manufacturing in northern England. Another time it was a more than slightly unhinged American evangelical pastor who insisted that gays and/or women who worked were destroying society. Sometimes he laughed and sometimes he could only shake his head in despair. But whatever the topic being discussed, just having the voices made things a little better. He was still, however, just a solitary man sitting alone in a tiny room night after night.

But one Thursday, just before 04:00, he found a new station and a very different sort of program. It was not a recorded lecture, but a live call-in show. 

The voice was what caught his attention first. Melodious, rich, somehow very intimate. It took several minutes before John started paying attention to what was actually being said, rather than just the voice itself.

“…and obviously it was your ex-girlfriend who stole your dog. She always thought that you loved the spaniel more than you loved her. Which is true, of course, and undoubtedly a logical decision on your part, since dogs are more worthy than 99% of humankind.” The words were snapped out in that amazing voice and John barely realised that he was leaning closer to the radio, not wanting to miss anything the man said.

The caller finally got a word in edgewise. “But where is my dog now?” he asked plaintively.

Even the sigh was sharp and annoyed. “At her grandmother’s, of course.”

A loud click indicated that the call had ended.

“Well,” the voice said, “that’s another two hours of my life wasted on the boring problems you people keep bringing to me. Not a genuine mystery in the bunch. I might as well be dealing with the dolts at Scotland Yard. Please try to be more interesting tomorrow night or I might be forced to throw myself out of the studio window. Repeatedly.”

A soft violin tune began to play and then a quite ordinary radio voice spoke over the music. “Tune in again tomorrow at 02:00 for more fascinating cases on the Consulting Detective Show.”

Some new program started [a panel discussion on fishing in Nova Scotia, it seemed] but John reached over and switched the radio off.

He actually found himself smiling a bit as he got into bed. His dreams that night were hazy, nothing he could even remember in the morning, but whatever had happened, it was all narrated by the unforgettable voice and maybe because of that, when he awoke hours later, John was still smiling.

 

He tuned in again that night, of course. And then every Tuesday-Friday after that. The Consulting Detective quickly became the touchstone of John Watson’s existence. More than anything, he wished that there were some mystery in his life that would justify calling into the show. Something ‘not boring’ by choice.

But, as he told his therapist, nothing ever happened to him, so all he could do was listen and dream.

 

It was a quite ordinary Wednesday afternoon when John decided to take a walk through the park. He was already thinking about that night and wondering what the Consulting Detective would be talking about, so he only vaguely heard it the first time his name was shouted. The second time he stopped and turned around to find an acquaintance from his training days, Mike Stamford, hurrying towards him.

After a slightly awkward reunion, they got coffee and sat on a bench to talk.

“Who’d want me for a flatmate?” John said at one point, sounding rather more bitter than he had really intended to.

Mike gave a chuckle. “You’re the second person to say that to me today.”

“Who was the first?”

“Well, an interesting chap I know who sometimes uses the labs at Barts. And to be perfectly honest, he is a bit…odd, but I think you might cope.” Mike sipped his drink thoughtfully. “Some kind of a detective, apparently.”

John almost choked on the coffee. “A detective?” he said after the coughing ended. “Really?”

Mike shrugged. “Near as I can tell. Anyway, the important thing is, he’s looking for a flatmate.”

So, bemused, John went along with Mike to meet a detective. “A consulting detective” was the immediate correction. “The only one in the world; I invented the job.” A consulting detective, it turned out, who had a voice that rolled over John like molten dark chocolate and who looked at a broken down ex-soldier long enough to see past the cane and the empty eyes. 

Most amazingly of all, he met a detective who, for some reason, found in the completely ordinary John Hamish Watson the most delectable mystery of all. One that he was happy to spend the rest of his life trying to solve.

Although neither of them knew it yet, one day a Sherlock Holmes who was bent with age and whose curls had turned to silver, would embrace his husband and admit that he still had not solved the puzzle that was John Watson.

John would laugh and call him a silly old idiot and then go to make the tea.

**Author's Note:**

> Title From: Communications by Raymond Williams


End file.
